


Make Her Your Hello

by elle_nic



Series: The Lives we Had are No More... Carry On, Darling [2]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst, Answers the questions you all had, F/F, Pre-Slash, Prequel, or i think it does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24269902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: Miranda says goodbye before she says hello.
Relationships: Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Series: The Lives we Had are No More... Carry On, Darling [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751935
Comments: 25
Kudos: 117





	Make Her Your Hello

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this answers some of the questions you all were left with at the end of The Thing with Feathers. Tell me your thoughts, yell at me, whatever feels right. (Please don't cyberbully me about the poem.)
> 
> We have all said goodbyes in the recent months. Goodbye to lunches with friends and church or temple and the cinema. My heart aches at the other goodbyes we might have made. But I promise you all, there will be hellos. 
> 
> We will get through this, and we will say hello again. Until then, stay safe, stay home.
> 
> Elle xx

_I._

Miranda was in Charlotte, North Dakota when Jocelyn woke up from her death. She wasn’t there, but the frantic phone call she received from another member of her staff had let her know. Of course, she hadn’t responded very kindly to such a call. What nonsense, she fumed, for someone to claim such a thing when one of her trusted employees had passed away suddenly. But then she began hearing other things, people waking from their death with severe behavioural issues…

And then America panicked. 

She tried to get back to New York, but flights were impossible from NC. She tried to get out of America but nothing and no one cared how much influence she had on the very uniforms they wore, they would not get her on a flight. She’d called her first husband, who had connections in Spain and was there at the time, for help to get out. He’d asked for an hour to get back to her.

“There’s nothing, Miranda,” he said in lieu of a greeting when he returned her call. “The Spanish government is already placing a ban on America. Unless you can get citizenship in the next 24 hours then…”

He didn’t need to finish. Miranda already knew that she was stuck. She hadn’t been stuck since Miami in 2006 during a thunderstorm.

“Phillip, listen to me,” she said gravely into the receiver of her phone. “You and the girls, you _stay put_ , alright? Don’t go anywhere but where you already are.”

“I promise,” he said quietly. “I swear.”

“I mean it,” she whispered furiously at him. “They cannot… They cannot be threatened by this. Not the girls.”

“Miranda, I won’t let a thing happen to them. I’m more worried about you,” he stressed.

“I will be fine as I always am. I’m waiting on another call for… I don’t know, really. Direction.”

“You message me to tell me you’re safe, okay? Do you want to talk to the girls?”

Miranda’s panic turned into a sharp ache as her mind showed her the faces of her teen daughters. They were so like young adults now, so grown and mature. But they were also her babies, born so little and fragile. She would never shed the desire to protect them, even if it meant earning their resentment. This could not be the last time they talked. This could not be how they remembered their last call with her; panicked, stressed… dire. 

“Tell them I’ll speak to them soon,” she said. “Tell them I’ll be alright, even if they don’t hear from me terribly quickly.”

“I don’t think--”

“I have to go, Phillip,” she interrupted, feeling her eyes well with tears and her throat tighten. She hung up without saying goodbye.

Without saying goodbye.

_II._

Miranda felt herself grow colder in her uncertainty as the hours passed and she had no ideas as to how to get somewhere safe. Where could she go? She would have to rely on someone else to solve her problem, and that made her angry. All the influence, all the wealth she had and she couldn’t get back to her own home. She was just barely placid when a solution was presented to her in the form of a favour.

A broad man who had been helping out (by chance and not planning) on the shoot that Miranda was in North Carolina to oversee, had offered to drive her to his town where he was hoping to stay until everything settled down again. She was sceptical, not in the least because of the physique of the man. But he seemed honest, and Miranda had no other options that she could deny the man for. She agreed.

“You’ll call me Miranda. Ma’am is far too southern for me to bear.”

“As you say, Miranda,” the gentleman said. “I’m Caleb.” 

They shook hands, then stocked up on supplies (food, fuel, clothes) and then they drove in relatively easy silence. It was on hour four that Caleb received a phone call and decided to pull over to take it.

“Yeah,” he said instead of hello. Miranda nearly scolded him for his poor phone etiquette when Caleb’s face turned. “Bella?” he asked. “When?”

Miranda observed surreptitiously as the man, hulking and relatively genial, became stony.

“You should have told me earlier than now. I should’ve… You should’ve let me say goodbye.” And then he hung up and began driving again. Miranda fidgeted with her wristwatch, a flare of concern unravelling in her gut. 

“Everything alright?” she dared to ask. Caleb did not answer for a long time.

“It was my ex-wife,” he said when the sun was setting and they were nearly at Stockport, Caleb’s hometown. “My daughter passed away.”

Miranda pictured her daughters’ eyes and hair and noses and heard their piano recitals and saw their bedspreads at home. She didn’t say goodbye either. 

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she whispered to him, identifying his quiet as grief now that she knew more. 

“I don’t think this will be over with fast,” Caleb said, the silhouette of the trees and the sunset flickering past them in a montage that Miranda would never forget for the rest of her life. “You should call your family and tell them… Well, I don’t know what. But, whatever you need to say… _Say_ it. You might not get another chance.”

Miranda hadn’t realised they were rolling to another stop on the side of the road.

“This is about where reception cuts off. I’m happy to sit here and wait for however long, if you want, of course.” 

Miranda reached for her bag and her phone and stepped out of the car. She called her children. She told them she loved them, and that she would be fine, and however long it took, she’d see them again. They cried and asked her questions she couldn’t answer. They got angry at everything. They yelled at their father. But Miranda coaxed them into understanding. She soothed them as best as she could. She told them she loved them.

She said goodbye. 

_III._

Stockport was small and underdeveloped and everyone knew each other. It was horrible. It was safe. 

Carla, the woman in charge, had taken an instant wariness to Miranda, and Miranda had no desire to prove herself. She did as she was bid, however. She moved into a small home with another woman, Dianne, who paid as little attention to Miranda as anyone ever had, and assumed her chores within two days of settling in. She worked hard and talked with Caleb relatively often.

Their relationship was strange. They were nearly strangers, but they had confided things in each other that close friends might. It was a refreshing dynamic to Miranda, especially when he turned out to be one of the few people in the town that would actually listen to her. He made her feel… less like a stranger. What with her strange clothes and her strange surroundings and her strange, tragic life. 

Miranda worked hard as a result. She distracted herself with hours of labour, stocktaking and drawing up plans for rationing resources (much like a budget). She was lonely and she missed her children. 

“Was it truly necessary to wake at predawn,” Miranda groused as they finally made it to vehicle shed A where an SUV waited for them. It was scavenge day, and Caleb had volunteered himself then asked Miranda if she’d be willing to tag along with him and Hamish. Miranda liked them both, and they seemed both respectful and scared of her, so she agreed. She wished she’d stayed in bed, now, however. 

“It’ll be nice to see the sunrise,” Hamish said cheerfully. He was an awfully likeable boy, and Miranda tried very hard not to dote on him like she sometimes felt like. She’d always wanted a son.

“Carla wants us to do what we can with the day. The day starts at sunrise,” Caleb rumbled. Miranda rolled her eyes at him.

“Well, whatever Carla says,” Miranda said, false cheerfulness accidentally perking her up. Caleb said nothing and Hamish huffed a laugh. The route was new to Miranda, having never been to that part of America or anywhere north of Stockport that wasn’t Canada. It was picturesque until they roved into big small towns (that’s a thing, apparently). The round trip they had decided on (that Carla told them to take) would take them through four more prominent towns in a round circuit. 

Seeing cities empty of people and activity, either abandoned or holed up in their homes, was surreal. To see absolutely no one just walking or driving or anything… Miranda used to wish for the streets of New York to be empty. For everyone to just go away and let her do her job. She changed her mind, then. She wanted people. She wanted to see them walking and talking and wasting time because they could and life would go on. 

“The fuck is that,” Caleb growled, catching Miranda’s attention as they drove along a lonely highway. Miranda saw a group of wanderers, as she preferred to call them, running after a figure that was clearly not a wanderer. The woman was sprinting, her large travel backpack hindering her, surely. Miranda’s heart thumped in her chest. 

“Speed up, Caleb,” Miranda ordered surely. Caleb did as she told him, speeding past the woman. As they passed, and as Miranda looked out the window to see, the woman whipped her head around and showed her face. The face that Miranda had hoped might be safe in all this. A face Miranda had missed in quiet, lonely moments in the years since Paris. 

“Hamish,” Miranda growled.

“On it!” the boy said, then opened the back door as Caleb skidded to a sharp halt. “Run!”

“Holy shit.”

Miranda tensed in her seat, perfectly still as Caleb and Hamish talked with a woman Miranda didn’t think to ever see, and never under such circumstances. 

Vaguely, Miranda heard that Andréa had walked from Pittsburg and was headed to Cincinnati. She’d been alone--more alone than Miranda had been--and she’d been scared, most likely. Miranda didn’t like that. When she had thought of Andréa in the past, she had always imagined her working away at a desk somewhere or at a bar with friends or lazing around her home being happy and young and successful. Not… Not running for her _life._

“...And that’s Miranda,” she heard Hamish say, coming back to herself. She shut her eyes, watching as her old imagery of Andréa The Journalist melted away and remoulded into Andréa The Survivor. She exhaled, and something told her that this change was meant to be. Miranda would mould her again; she would help her settle…

“Hello, Andréa,” she said clearly.

She would make Andréa safe… happy, if she could manage…

She would make Andréa her hello.

  
  
  
  


_Time from you is pain._

_We come and go,_

_we drift apart._

_And then we live again._

_-Elle Nic, Live again_   
  



End file.
